


Friend or foe?

by genderneutralnoun



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Gen, general sass is used here, this is an old thing from a while ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 19:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12305904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genderneutralnoun/pseuds/genderneutralnoun
Summary: Just some old stuff I found while searching through my Google Drive. Enjoy some patented Midna snark.





	Friend or foe?

At first, Link wasn’t sure if she was awake or asleep.

Then, her nose registered, and a ton of very unpleasant smells processed to her mind. Yep, she was  _ definitely  _ awake.

She felt really warm- a fluffy, thick blanket seemed to be covering her, but for some reason, it was skin-tight. Her fingers felt fused together, and she couldn’t feel her thumbs. Her face felt stretched, as if someone had pulled her nose out. And there was some weird stuff going on with more personal parts as well. Weirdest of all, she had a  _ tail-  _ that was the only way to describe the flop of bone and muscle (and more fur) she could feel hanging off her… well, where tails go.

Link opened her eyes, trying to see if she could make sense of what had happened. She turned her gaze to her hand- and jumped to her feet with a yelp when there was not a hand, but a gray-furred  _ paw  _ there.

Or at least, she tried. As the front half of her reared up, something slammed into her other hand- no, her other  _ paw _ \- and she was jolted back down. The something turned out to be a shackle bolted to the floor, keeping her from going any further from one foot away from it.

Since that was settled, Link decided to figure out what was happening with her. She tried to look around at herself, but it was hard. From she could gather, she was a wolf.

Link wasn’t particularly thrilled about that. She, like all at least semi-intelligent people, knew that wolves usually lived in packs, and tried to stay as far away from humans as they could, only attacking or preying on them when there was no other choice. However, a wolf on its own could turn desperate, and would attack humans, especially small humans, without a second thought. So it made sense no one wanted wolves around much.

She also wasn’t thrilled about the shackle. Considering how she was in a small room with bars blocking the only exit, it didn’t seem particularly necessary.

The first step, of course, was to get the thing off her. She already hated it and it’s clanking, reverberating painfully in her now-extra-sensitive ears.  Not mention it restricted her movement, and that was a thing that was not going to happen. 

She seized it in her jaws, but drew back almost immediately. The metal was hard, and even her newly sharpened teeth wouldn’t cut it. She seized it again, more gently, and began to worry her teeth on it. Sharp needles of pain tingled in her teeth, but she stubbornly kept on.

A strange smell, unlike she’d anything she’d smelled before, startled her into dropping the chain. It was strange to smell something before seeing or hearing it, as her human nose wasn’t very good.

The smell was very faintly human, but with something else stronger. Something similar to what she could smell on herself, which she knew hadn’t been there when she was human. This was the smell she hadn’t smelled before. 

A strange humanoid… well, the best word Link could think of was  _ imp  _ loomed out of the darkness behind her. Her head was much larger than her strangely shaped body, with a large stone on her head that looked crossed between a crown and a mask, and if the black markings on her extremely pale skin were supposed to be her clothes, then she (it was definitely a she) was wearing  _ way  _ too little.

“I found you!” the strange creature said gleefully, in a voice that echoed weirdly despite the very much not-echo-y-ness of the room.

Link crouched her front paws aggressively and growled.

“OOOO, aren’t you  _ scary, _ ” she said mockingly, then laughed in a high-pitched cackle. “Are you sure you want to be doing that? Snarling and glaring at me? Well, that’s too bad. I  _ was  _ planning on helping you… if you were nice.”

Link shut her mouth immediately and stood up properly.  _ Damn my impulsiveness. _

She cackled again. “That’s much better! You humans are obedient to a fault, aren’t you?” She walked over to Link and tapped her on the nose. (Link had to resist the urge to sneeze.) “Oops! But you  _ aren’t  _ a human anymore, are you? You’re a beast!” Another cackle. Link had the feeling she would grow to hate that laugh.

Link lunged at her angrily. She leapt away gracefully, grinning even more. “There, there. You be a good girl and calm down. No need to bite.”

She put her hands together, and then threw something like a ball at Link. She couldn’t leap out of the way in time- but it turned out she didn’t need to, as the ball hit the chain locking her to the floor, snapping one of the links (pun not intended) and releasing her.

This… was not expected. She’d thought the imp was one of her captors, come to toy with her or make a deal or something. Releasing her didn’t seem like a captor sort of thing to do.

“You look kind of surprised!” she said with yet another cackle. “Well, I bet you’re wondering, where exactly ARE we?” She seemed to phase though the iron bars, appearing on the other side. “How about I make you a deal- if you can get over here, maybe I’ll tell you!”

Link did not trust this strange, snarky creature. She definitely did not trust the deal laid out by said strange, snarky creature. But she intended to escape anyway, so whatever.

She sniffed around, but couldn’t sense anything out of place. All she could see was a bit of hay, maybe for her to lie down on, and a half-broken box shoved up against the bars.

Link seized the box with her teeth and dragged it away. Beneath it was a hole, filled up partially with scraps and dirt. She could wriggle her way through it.

She wormed her way into the hole with surprising ease; though perhaps it shouldn’t have been so surprising, considering she was a wolf now. Kicking her back legs to pop out on the other side, she heaved a large, dog sigh, then shook enthusiastically to get the dirt and other unnameable things out of her fur. The force of the motion surprised her, and she fell over.

Link laid there for a while, slowly considering the life choices that got her to this point.

“All done moping?” The snarky voice was back. “We haven’t got all day, you know. The guards are going to come check on you, and then even I won’t be able to get your sorry butt out of jail.”

_ I’m sorry,  _ Link thought sarcastically.  _ My whole body was just transformed, including some very sensitive areas. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not bursting with energy. _

“I heard that, you know.”

Link jumped to her feet.  _ What the- how? _

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Link heaved another sigh.  _ This one was going to be tricky. _

“I heard that, too.”

_ Can’t I have at least a little privacy? _

“No.”

_ Should have seen that coming.  _ She stuck out her tongue at the thing, a feat made quite easy by her much-lengthened tongue.

“Put that away, we have work to do.” As if to punctuate the sentence, the imp floated over quickly and landed on top of the girl-turned-wolf, sitting astride her as if she were a horse.

Link yelped at the sudden weight, and instinctively danced in a circle trying to throw off the unexpected burden. But the creature held on, with almost condescending ease. “Ooh, a bucking one,” she cackled. “I know just how to tame this wild horsie! Eee hee hee!” And with another cackle, she grabbed Link’s ears, forcing her into a calmer state lest she bend them.

“Now, that’s better, isn’t it?”

_ I think we can agree to disagree here. _

To Link’s surprise, the imp nearly choked on a laugh. “Hah. You might not be such bad company after all, mutt.”


End file.
